First day of school

Well it wasn’t exactly as I had planned due to having a doc appointment for Wombat this morning, which of course look longer than expected. I have not yet had one doc appointment that I haven’t had to wait at least 1 hour for!!

So all we did was some more work on our praying mantis learning. Wombat was fascinated by the “Bub” his word for bug! We also read some of the farm books we borrowed from the library.

Homeschool Share has a fantastic Praying Mantis Lapbook which we are using.

Below - First day of school photos. We always take a measurement each year and compare how much the kids have grown. That piece of wood is our measurement board! We have moved so many times over the past few years and it always comes with us! Duckie just had to sneak Honey into help her do school. You learn so much better with a puppy on your lap!!

try 3 weeks of Sonlight

Would you like to try Sonlight before you buy?

The link below enables you to try a 3 week sample - you could borrow the books from the library and see if it is what you are after. Once you have tried Sonlight you will LOVE it.

3 week trial

The Ultimate Montessori Homemade Materials Collaboration

Montessori Items are so expensive to buy especially for good quality ones. So What DID we do all day? has come up with a linky list – so if you are wanting some ideas start here (click on the picture to go to the blog and then the link)

– if you have made some please add to the list.

ReadingLessons.com

Another Free reading Program – again this one looks great and has all the information you need to teach your child to read.

ReadingLessons.com has 52 books in the series that you can download free of charge. You do need to create an account but this is so easy and gives you instant access to the site. Each book has word cards and lesson plans to help you teach the lesson. I am still exploring the site but what I have seen so far is fantastic!

My Downloads are down!

I am in the process of swapping all my downloads from Scribd as I discovered that you have to pay to download or have an account and upload there first so I am going to store my downloads at 2 places and see how they work. For the moment you can still access the Scribd ones but I will be changing all the links slowly

The first is at Homeschool Launch and the second is at Media Fire – I am still in the process of getting that up and running. So please be patient with me. I am slowly tracking down all the file I have that were saved in various spots while I had no computer and then replacing all the software I had so I can remake and edit them. So far I have some Sonlight downloads up at Homeschool Launch.

Free Reading Program for the month of January

Funnix Reading Program is offering their complete reading program for free this month – it is a computer download. The author of the program was also behind the reading program ‘Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons’

Remember this free offer is only for the month of January 2011!

A-Rhyme-A-Week Site

A-Rhyme-A-Week is a phonological awareness program featuring 30 different rhymes – It is a 30 week program and covers the following “rimes” -ack, –ail/ale, –ain, –ake, –ame, –an, –ap, –at, –ate, –aw, –ay, –eat, –ell, –est, –ice, –ick, –ide, –ight, –ill, –in, –ine, –ing, –ink, –it, –ock, –oke, –op, –ore, –ot, –ump. (note these are listed in alphabetical order and not in the order presented.

There are free downloads for each week and they look like a fun and easy free way to add to your child’s learning of some of these difficult sounds. Zebra is very visual and I am sure this will help her a lot.

Just a note ...

... to explain my absence. I have no computer due to a breakin at our home :( as soon as insurance gets their act together and replaces it I will be back on. Meanwhile I have a host of ideas and am looking forward to beginning Sonlight Core 1 in January. See you in the new year!!!

Tt is for Turtle

We are spending one morning a week with another family and doing a “theme” day around the alphabet.  This week was letter T.  We used the turtle theme from Confessions of a homeschooler. 

To make it more Australian we also read Yakkinn the Swamp Tortoise – the most dangerous year.  This follows the first year in the life of an endangered tortoise.  We  really enjoyed the pictures (the illustrations have an aboriginal theme to them) the story was well written and we will be looking for the next book.  I want to add this one to our personal library!

The girls illustrated the book by making pictures depicting the seasons as shown in the book. 

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We made turtles out of collected gum nuts.

We had turtle bread for lunch – each child making their own turtle out of bread dough.

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We had fruit turtles for afternoon tea.

Turtle FUN!!

Font Fun

I found this amazing website with lots and lots of free fonts and they will make a font for you using your handwriting - how cool is that!!

Fonts for Peas



Looking for dot fonts - to make handwriting sheets - this is so hard as they all want you to pay for the font!

Handwriting Worksheet maker lets you make worksheets using dot handwring.



There are hundreds of free fonts at 1001 fonts -

Miss Olsen's ClassroomFonts 1.0 is a dot font (you might have to scroll down the link to find it)